Winnie the Pooh trailer released

The official YouTube account for Walt Disney Animation Studios has unveiled the first trailer for next year’s new, hand-drawn Winnie the Pooh movie. Check it out after the jump.

Due out on July 15th, Winnie the Pooh will have a similar format to 1977’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which adapted various stories from A.A. Milne’s novels and presented them in a chapter-like manner (although The Many Adventures was in fact a collection of three previously released featurettes). The 2011 movie will adapt five of the original stories which have not been adapted before. From the trailer, I can gather that one will be “In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump” and another will be “In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One.”

The release of the trailer follows the revealing of two stills from the film yesterday, one of which you can see above, and another of which you can see here:

I love The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, so I’m really looking forward to this. The animation looks beautiful, and the characters seem as charismatic as ever. While I’m with Russ at /Film on the CGI honey (i.e. I’d rather it wasn’t CGI), apart from that, this looks thoroughly entertaining.

Interestingly, Zooey Deschanel will apparently sing a new version of the Winnie the Pooh theme for the film. Could be good, could be sickly-sweet – we shall see. The song used in the trailer is “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane, in case any of you out there are after it.

Burny Mattinson worked as story supervisor on the film, so there is some overlap between this and The Many Adventures; he was a key animator on the three films that made up the 1977 release, and has contributed to storyboards on other past Disney films. Hunter at Blue Sky Disney says that sources tell him Mattinson worked out the story very well, and that Winnie the Pooh has turned out to be a “sweet, little gem.” Apparently it will also be the last film to utilise Disney’s “classic” style of animation, with large changes to come after 2012, with films such as an adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

I hope Winnie the Poohis in fact a gem. Perhaps unfortunately for the box office aspect, it opens on the same day as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II – not a problem for me though; that will make a great double bill.

Shame it opens on the same day as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II. Now I can’t watch this cause I wont have the cash to spare since I will definitely be watch DH Part 2 many times. Oh well.